The treatment of extragonadal seminoma.

Primary extragonadal seminoma (EGS) is a rare tumor of young adults that often presents with bulky primary tumors and metastatic disease. Long-term survival is inadequate with conventional therapy consisting of radiotherapy with or without surgery. The charts of 21 patients with EGS treated initially either with conventional therapy (group I) or with multimodality therapy including initial chemotherapy with high doses of cisplatin followed by either radiotherapy or surgery or both (group II) were reviewed. Five of the ten patients in group I developed recurrent disease and four of them eventually died of disease. Only one of 11 patients in group II died of metastatic disease and the remaining patients are free of disease with 19+ to 46+ months of follow-up. Of the six patients from group II who underwent surgical resection of apparently residual disease after chemotherapy but prior to radiotherapy, five were found to have completely necrotic tumor and one had microscopic disease on histologic examination, proving the efficacy of chemotherapy. Combined modality therapy including initial chemotherapy containing high doses of cisplatin provided rapid reduction in tumor burden and the results appeared superior to treatment that did not include initial chemotherapy.